The Intersection of Innovation and Contemporary Living

Daily Archives: August 4, 2008

I’m calling bullshit on this effort by Most Public to index and rank influencers. The current state of the art in brand monitoring makes it very difficult to differentiate between volume (as in amplitude), reach, and actual influence. For me this is a I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it thing…

This is The MostPublic Index, a detailed barometer of the most public news influencers of today’s digital world. It illustrates how a new breed of influencer is shaping the media environment and what’s heard by the general population. Today, news makers and reporters are increasingly indistinguishable. In fact, a teenage Twitterer may have as powerful a voice as the New York Times editorial board. Therefore, NowPublic has defined this new type as a “news influencer.” The first MostPublic Index identifies the 50 most influential individuals in New York.

It’s not so much the goal of encouraging healthy living, it’s the tactics that are bothering people. I dread the thought of living in a community that thinks so highly of itself as to consider it proper to tell me what to eat and how to eat it. While SF is neglecting the basics of good government, as in the everyday quality of life issues that affect 100% of us like clean pothole free streets, they are busying themselves with the fantasy of micromanaging the lives of citizens.

There is also a certain degree of duplicity about all of this that ranks right up there with Britain’s PM Browne lecturing us on food waste after he himself is exposed for having chowed down on 14 courses between lunch and dinner at a recent G8 summit. It is one certainty in politics that those who take pleasure in telling others how to live don’t relish having the spotlight turned on their personal choices and lifestyles.

Lastly, Los Angeles recently made news by banning fast food restaurants from a portion of south LA in the name of creating more food choices. I found this news to be another example of a rather stunning overreach by government but the attendant media and commentary reaction, or lack thereof, was in fact more telling. If you buy into the notion that this is a good thing what you are essentially doing is endorsing the notion that poor people are incapable of making healthy food choices and therefore it is the job of government take away what are deemed as bad choices.

I doubt the public and media reaction would have been so sanguine if the fast food companies themselves had come out and said they were closing all of their south LA outlets because of crime and economic concerns. They would have been blasted for acts of racism… so why is the city council getting off so easy?